George Pell

George Pell (8 June 1941-) was an Australian cardinal of the Catholic Church from 24 February 2014 to 12 December 2018. He previously served as Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001 and Archbishop of Sydney from 2001 to 2014, and, on 26 February 2019, he was convicted of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old choir boys at Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Biography
George Pell was born in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia in 1941 to a non-practicing Anglican father of English descent and to a devout Catholic mother of Irish descent. At St. Patrick's College, he played soccer, and he was signed by the Richmond Football Club in 1959. In 1966, he became an ordained Catholic priest, and he studied in Rome, at Oxford, and at Monash University. In 1996, he became Archbishop of Melbourne, and he set up a diocesan protocol to investigate and deal with complaints of sexual abuse in the archdiocese. Ironically, in 2017, Pell himself was accused of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old choir boys during the 1990s, and he was fired from the Council of Cardinal Advisers in October 2018, fired as a Cardinal on 12 December 2018, and convicted on 26 February 2019.